I watched the DVD of this film last night. It is an absolutely beautiful movie. The DVD's 'special features' included the original trailer which boasted that the film was made in 'Superscope.' Does anyone know what this innovation was?
shareI suspect that's a re-release trailer, and that they matted the original 1.37 three-strip (Actually four-strip) Technicolor presentation down to a widescreen format. It most certainly wasn't made in a widescreen format, though.
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"I'm vilifying you for God's sake - pay attention!"
That wasn't the original trailer. That was the trailer for the 1950's re-release. Superscope was a widescreen process, and "Henry V" was re-released in that format, but it wasn't made in widescreen. It was blown up to widescreen for that release, but in order to do that, the top and bottom of the picture had to be chopped off.
Widescreen wasn't being used in 1944, when the film was made, so the original release had the picture in "square" format, like on a non-HD TV set.
I am watching this film now on my widescreen TV.
Using the zoom view feature on the monitor it is quite possible to re-create a very passable fake-widescreen (ie: Super-Scope)version.
With the exception of the opening credits and one or two isolated shots, the film works very well in a 16:9 format.
"If you don't know the answer -change the question."
Unfortunately though, superscope was in the ratio of anamorphic widescreen processes at the time (roughly 21:9). It must have looked ghastly.
http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/wingss2.htm
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